


been drinkin' too much egg nog

by oh_la_fraise



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Fluff, M/M, Stucky Secret Santa 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-09 21:06:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5555360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_la_fraise/pseuds/oh_la_fraise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even though he knows the true meaning of Christmas is family—Bucky has been watching a lot of Hallmark movies lately—Steve deserves a holiday with all of the fanfare.  He could go out and buy everything, but he knows Steve, and he knows Steve will appreciate everything more if Bucky puts some work into it.  So.  Homemade everything: ornaments, food, presents.  </p>
<p>Or: Bucky tries to throw Christmas.  It doesn't go well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	been drinkin' too much egg nog

**Author's Note:**

> My Stucky Secret Santa gift for Queen of the Geeks 17! I'm not saying that icing anecdote happened to me but it totally happened to me. Title is from Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, the ultimate holiday fail song.

Bucky decides to do Christmas _big_.

It starts after the Avengers' Thanksgiving dinner, when they're back in their apartment. Bucky is sprawled across Steve's lap, Steve carding his hand through Bucky's hair. Bucky's mostly asleep, so it takes him a minute to recognize Steve's spoken. “What?” he repeats muzzily. Steve laughs and runs his hand through Bucky's hair again. “I said, what do you want to do for Christmas? It's in a few weeks.”

Oh. Right.

Bucky had always loved Christmas before he fell, but they had never had much for Christmas growing up. This year will technically be his second Christmas back, but he isn't really counting last Christmas, considering he'd been mostly catatonic. _Now that I'm better_ , Bucky thinks, i _t'd be nice to have a really big Christmas_. Even though he knows the _true_ meaning of Christmas is family—Bucky has been watching a lot of Hallmark movies lately—Steve deserves a holiday with all of the fanfare. He could go out and buy everything, but he knows Steve, and he knows Steve will appreciate everything more if Bucky puts some work into it. So. Homemade everything: ornaments, food, presents.

“I'll. . .plan it,” he says slowly. “We'll have the works.” The more he thinks about it, the more the idea crystallizes in his mind. He'll get a beautiful tree, make Steve dinner, a homemade gift. . .Maybe he'll even sing Steve a song.

Steve's hand stills in his hair. “You sure? That's a lot.”

Bucky smiled. “Yeah, I want to.”

“Okay.”  
  
This Christmas would be the best ever, Bucky promised to himself. Steve would love it.

 

**Step One: the Tree**

 

There was a big tree in the lobby of their building set up by some high ranking Stark Industries coordinator, and a slightly smaller but no less perfectly decorated one commissioned by Pepper for the Avengers' common room floor. They were beautiful, but not very personal and disturbingly uniform. Bucky wants to have something a little more sentimental.

Before the war, Steve had sold hand painted ornaments during the holidays to earn extra money. They were true works of art: beautiful calligraphy and holiday scenery and every one custom. Bucky had several that he had carefully displayed every year. After he fell, Becca had saved them and passed them down to her children. Her grandson had given them back to Bucky a few months ago. Bucky had cried when he saw them—he cried at everything these days because recovery made his emotions a little wacky. They are all ready to go on a tree Bucky had yet to buy, but he realizes a few days into his Best Christmas Ever plan that the tree will be way too empty with just Steve's ornaments. He briefly thinks about asking Steve to make new ones, but decides that would go against the grain of spoiling Steve. 

He is just going to have to make new ones himself.

JARVIS helpfully informs there is a Michael's a few blocks away, so Bucky walks over, enjoying the crisp cool winter air and the bright holiday decorations. When he walks in to a packed, overly white store with so much glitter, _everywhere,_ he feels suffocated. People are everywhere, holding up bunches of fake flowers and arguing over scrap book paper. He tries to flag down a harried looking woman in a red apron, but she ignores him in favor of briskly striding towards a closed register. He gives up and heads in a random direction. 

He finds himself in the picture frames, meandering in what he hopes is the right direction. Along the way, he walks by the yarn aisle. Bucky reaches out to touch a bundle, sighing at the softness. He still has to get Steve a present, he thinks, looking towards the knitting for beginner books. He grabs a few patriotically-colored skeins and keeps going until he found the clay ornaments. He swipes all types of candy canes, trees, and other holiday shapes into his basket and then throws some glitter and paint in as well.

When he gets back, he holes himself up in a room off of the common floor. The first few he paints are. . .disappointing to say the least. They look nothing like Steve's carefully hand painted glass orbs—they look more like someone's third grader had painted them, actually. Bucky sighs. He can't throw them away—he won't have enough to cover the tree without making another trip to craft store hell—so he needs the rest to look _really_ good. He needs help.

“You know we could just pay someone to paint these,” Tony says, hunched over a teddy bear. It was, unsurprisingly, painted carefully red and dusted in gold glitter.

“No, the point is for them to be handmade.” Sam says, finishing the gears on his angel wings. 

“And they look just as good,” Natasha said, painting a Santa in a disturbing lime. Everyone was too afraid to correct her.

 

**Step Two: The Present**

 

Bucky discovers he _really_ likes knitting. It's soothing. There's something about methodically looping stitch after stitch that calms him. He puts on a playlist, camping out on the roof so Steve won't see his present, and time passes without him realizing it. Before he knows it the sweater is almost done.

When he finally finishes the sweater, his pride quickly morphs into horror. It's . . .lumpy, is the only way he can describe it. The red, white, and blue stripes are completely uneven, and one sleeve is decidedly longer than the other.

He should just trash it and buy something. But. . .he worked so hard on it. Steve will appreciate the effort, he thinks. Hopefully. Bucky wraps it anyway.

 

**Step Three: the Music**

 

“Sir,” JARVIS intones from the ceiling, “you were approximately four tones above the standard—”

“Shut it, JARVIS,” Bucky says, then continues to practice warbling his way through “All I Want for Christmas.”

 

**Step Four: The Food**

 

Bucky isn't much of a cook; he readily admits it. The last time he had tried to cook, three people had gotten food poisoning. He'd once again reached out to Pepper—he needed to get her a gift too, now—and she is ordering most of the food for Christmas dinner for him. But he still wants to make something himself. When he was little, he had loved to help his mom bake. He thinks her fried dough might be a little beyond him, but he found a recipe for red velvet cake that didn't seem too complicated. That has always been Steve's favorite, anyway. So the morning of Christmas, he pulls out of all his baking gear and gets to work.

He carefully mixes the cocoa powder with the red food coloring, folding it in with the buttermilk and flour. He fills the pans, tapping them gently to make sure they were even, and slides them in the oven. Thirty minutes later, during which he puts up the tree and all of the ugly-but-charming Avenger-made ornaments, he pulls out two beautiful red cakes and sets them on the cooling rack. He's proud of the cake. Baking, he had read, was difficult for a lot of people, but the regulated methodicalness of baking makes a lot more sense to him than the frustrating vagueness of cooking.

Bucky's sure that the cake, unlike the ornaments and the sweater, is going to be the one thing that turns out right until he goes to frost the cake. He realizes pretty quickly he doesn't have enough to cover the whole cake. The white cream cheese icing is slapped haphazardly with the red cake peeking through; it looks like it's bleeding. “JARVIS,” he asks the ceiling hesitantly. Even on Christmas morning, something had to be open. It's _New York._ “Is there anywhere I can get cream cheese?”

“The nearest open store with cream cheese in stock is approximately five miles away, sir.”  
  
That. . .was really far to go and get back before Steve wakes up, which would be any minute.

“How about in the tower? Does anyone have any I could steal?”

“Mr. Barton has some, sir, but it expired approximately four months ago.”

A rustle comes from the bedroom; Steve was awake. Bucky swears and covers up the cake with foil before Steve can see it. They'll just have to eat it as is.

 

**The Big Day:**

 

Steve walks out of the room slowly, pressing a kiss to Bucky's forehead. “Looks good in here. Merry Christmas.”

“Thanks,” Bucky says, pulling him in for a real kiss. It looks the opposite of good. The only tree he could find was a bare, sad thing, and he had draped tacky tinsel he'd found in the Target dollar aisle strewn everywhere. But Steve seems happy, and that is all that matters.

They spend the day quietly, cuddling on the couch. They had spent Thanksgiving with the whole team, but for Christmas they had decided to have just the two of them. The food arrives around one, with enough to fill even two super soldiers. Blushing, Bucky reveals his patchy cake, icing missing in clumps, and Steve eats almost half of it. Bucky does his horribly off-key Mariah performance, and Steve thankfully doesn't laugh the whole time.

Eventually they settle down to open gifts. Steve opens his present, and immediately pulls it over his head. “Did you make this? This is great!” The sweater is gaping around Steve's neck on one side. It's too small—Bucky had based it on his own size, and figured it would work close enough. He's pretty sure the sweater is going to snap under the strain.

Bucky's box is pretty huge, but when he finally gets it open, there's another box inside. The package goes on matryoshka style until he reaches the final box—a small, black velvet one. He looks up at Steve, throat heavy.

“Go on,” Steve says, quietly.

Bucky opens the box carefully, hands shaking. Inside is a plain gold band.

He bursts into tears.

“Buck?” Steve asks, alarmed.

“Why would you want to marry _me?_ I'm crazy and I almost _killed_ you. And I couldn't even do Christmas _right—”_

“Buck,” Steve says, putting his hand on Bucky's arm. Steve has never been the best with people crying—Bucky had binged 30 Rock at one point and the scene with Alec Baldwin patting Tina Fey on the back with a broom had reminded him of Steve way too much—but he's always done his best for Bucky. Bucky doesn't deserve him at all, little less deserve to marry him. Still, he folds himself into Steve's arms gratefully.

“Hey, shh,” Steve says, rocking him. “I love you more than anything. You're the best thing that's ever happened to me. Why wouldn't I want to marry you? You're one of the only people who's seen me for who I am, and you've been by my side as long as I can remember.”

“Yeah, except for that time I put a bullet in your stomach.”

Steve's hand strokes down his back. “You were operating under decades of torture and brainwashing. You snapped out of it and saved me. That's another reason why I love you: how strong you are.”

Bucky hums, tears mostly stopped. He doesn't agree, but this is an argument they've had plenty of time before and it isn't going to be solved today. Steve squeezes him and lifts Bucky's left hand. “Can I?”

Bucky sighs. “Do you think I could ever tell you no?”

Steve gives him a huge smile that makes Bucky heart stutter and slides the ring on. It looks fragile amongst the metal plates, but it works. “Now, what was that about you ruining Christmas?”

“I wanted you to have a perfect Christmas. The tree is pathetic, and the cake didn't have enough icing, and—”

“Hey,” Steve interrupts, “I thought it was perfect. I know this going to sound sappy, but—I really appreciate all of the nice things you did for me, I really do, but. Having you here? That's all I need for Christmas. For anytime, really.”

He settles back into Steve's arms, placated. Steve is the biggest goof ever, but Bucky loves him more than anything. “You know,” Bucky muses, “I could redeem myself. We _do_ have a wedding to plan after all. . .”

Steve laughs and kisses him on the forehead. “Sounds great.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hello on [tumblr!](http://ohlafraise.tumblr.com/)


End file.
